Our Story

We’re on a mission to mobilize & empower the world for good.

Classy is the world’s fastest growing fundraising platform for social impact organizations. Since 2011,
we’ve enabled millions of people across 300K individual campaigns to help fund more than 3,000
organizations. From cutting-edge health programs to educational advancement, our customers are tackling the
world’s greatest challenges with the power of the Classy platform.

Product Launched2011

# of Employees180

Total RaisedHundreds of Millions

# of Fundraising Campaigns300K+

The first fundraising campaign
on the Classy platform was our own.

Back in 2006, a group of my friends and I decided that we wanted to dedicate some of our spare time
to fundraise for an important cause that was near and dear to our own hearts — the fight against
cancer. My mother had battled breast cancer twice as I was growing up, and most of my friends also
had similar stories.

Our initial fundraising idea was simple… really simple. The idea was to get our friends
together for a pub crawl in Pacific Beach, San Diego and donate the extra cash to the American
Cancer Society. As we were coming up with the idea, the movie Anchorman with Will Ferrell
happened to be playing in our apartment, and we quickly jumped at the chance to name our first
fundraiser after Ron Burgundy’s catchphrase in the movie, “You Stay Classy,
San Diego”. And thus, the StayClassy charity pub crawl was born.

Over the course of the next four years we hosted dozens of fundraising events in our spare time:
first pub crawls, then concerts, then races and more. Each event benefited local nonprofit
organizations, and engaged young people in philanthropy in new and cool ways.
Continue reading…

However, as time went on, we began to uncover a much greater challenge than how to simply rally
our friends together to raise money. It started with our experience donating to the American
Cancer Society after our first event, and became more obvious as we worked closely with our
nonprofit partners. It boiled down to this:

A new wave of young people were hungry to change the world, but nonprofits seemed to be
missing the opportunity to engage these modern philanthropists in a meaningful way.

We realized that if the overall experience of giving (especially online giving) wasn’t
improved for this next generation of philanthropists, nonprofits — and the causes they
champion — would be in trouble. Someone needed to step in and help fill this gap. And so,
we set off to build an online fundraising platform that would help connect our young event
attendees with our nonprofit beneficiaries in a more meaningful way. At first the Classy
platform simply facilitated the event registration and the peer-to-peer fundraising leading up
to our own events, but within a short amount of time, it was easy to see the potential of what
we had built. Our attendees were using the platform to tell their own story and raise money from
family and friends with this simple, intuitive and modern tool at their disposal. The result?
Our fundraising events started raising more money than ever.

So in January 2011, five years after the original StayClassy charity pub crawl, we launched a
much improved version of the Classy fundraising platform and opened it up to any nonprofit
organization that wanted to use it for its own campaigns and events. From that point forward we
began focusing 100% of our time on fulfilling this new vision of an improved giving experience
for every cause-based organization in the world.

Today, Classy is a staff of 180+ people and serves more than 3,000 nonprofit organizations and
social enterprises around the world including Oxfam, The World Food Programme and National
Geographic. Through a combination of online fundraising, mobile and community engagement tools,
our platform helps organizations create a better giving experience for their own supporters, so
they can spend their time tackling humanity’s greatest challenges.

Our team is eight years in so far, yet we have never been more energetic and motivated to tackle
the challenges ahead. As the world’s problems grow more complex, it’s going to take
a united & global effort to ensure that future generations inherit a planet that they can
be proud of. Nonprofits and social enterprises are on the front lines trying to make this a
reality and our ability to help people support these efforts has never been more important.

Scot Chisholm CEO & Co-Founder

2006

Friends Scot Chisholm, Pat Walsh, and Marshall Peden host the StayClassy Pub
Crawl benefiting the American Cancer Society. The name came from Ron
Burgundy’s catchphrase in the movie Anchorman, which happened
to be playing when they were deciding on a name for the pub crawl.

2007

Classy hosts dozens of fundraising events to engage local San Diego
millennials in philanthropy. Events range from concerts, walks/runs and
other social events, and each event benefits a nonprofit organization
including Wounded Warrior Project, Surfrider Foundation, and San Diego Youth
Services.

Classy mobilizes an emergency collection drive in response to the California
wildfires, distributing truckloads of supplies to local shelters. The drive
became one of San Diego County’s largest community-driven relief efforts.

2008

Scot & Pat quit their day jobs and conceive of an online fundraising
platform to help accelerate the impact of their own fundraising events.
Pete Nystrom and Joe Callahan join the team, to lead engineering and design,
respectively.

2009

Alpha version of Classy software launches, and is used to raise money and
accept registrations at Classy's own fundraising events.

Classy hosts fundraising tailgate concert with the San Diego Padres featuring
Cage the Elephant & Del the Funky Homo Sapien. First use of registration
with fundraising on the platform.

Classy hosts the 1st Annual CLASSY Awards, to recognize the amazing work of
hundreds of local San Diego nonprofit organizations.

2010

Classy beta launches with a dozen local San Diego nonprofit organizations.

The 2nd Annual CLASSY Awards expands rapidly, attracting nominations from 8
cities nationwide; winners are announced onstage at the Awards Ceremony in San Diego.

2011

Classy publicly launches its online fundraising platform, open to any
nonprofit organization in the United States. Two dozen nonprofit
organizations raise $500K on the platform in in its first year.

The 3rd Annual CLASSY Awards becomes a national event - attracting
nominations from 49 states across the country. 1,500 people fly to San Diego
for the Awards Ceremony.

2012

Kony 2012 by Invisible Children becomes the most popular viral video of all
time, with over 150 million views, and the largest nonprofit crowdfunding
campaign ever, raising more than $4m on Classy in less than 60 days.

More than 2,400 organizations are nominated for the 4th Annual CLASSY Awards.
Classy creates the Leadership Council, a diverse group of prestigious leaders
and experts in the social sector, to determine the national winners.

Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast of the United States and over $750k is
raised to aid the relief effort across several organizations. Largest
disaster response effort on the platform to-date.

SEAL Family Foundation raises over $650K on Classy for the Ty Woods Memorial
Fund, the CIA Operative who was killed in combat during the Benghazi embassy
attack in 2012. Company milestone, not exactly. Much respect, without a doubt.

Pencils of Promise passes $1M raised on the Classy platform and breaks ground
on more than 100 schools. Becomes the 5th organization to raise over $1M on
the Classy platform.

Malala Yousafzai launches her nonprofit organization, the Malala Fund, and
uses Classy to launch its first campaign and raises over $450K to empower
girls through education. Largest “first campaign” for any organization on
the platform to-date.

University of California launches its first-ever crowdfunding campaign on
Classy and raises over $1M for low-income student scholarships. First
higher-ed organization to use the Classy platform.

Classy platform breaks single day donation record with over $725K raised on
December 31, 2013.

2014

In partnership with the United Nations Foundation, 3,600 programs in 115
countries are evaluated for the 5th Annual CLASSY Awards, making it one of
the largest and most prestigious awards in the social sector.

Classy passes 1,000 customers including Oxfam America, National Geographic,
World Food Program USA, Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation & Special Olympics World
Games 2015.

Classy surpasses $100M in total donations raised since its launch in January
2011.

Salesforce Ventures announces investment in Classy to help transform the
giving experience for every cause-based organization in the world.

Classy launches the One Million Meals campaign with the Salesforce.com
Foundation to bring one million meals to people in need around the world.

2015

The Classy platform has transformed the way that people around the world support Team Rubicon veterans as we
respond to natural disasters.
Jake Wood
CEO & Co-Founder Team Rubicon

Over the past four years, the Classy platform has become absolutely essential to Pencils of Promise as we
bring life-changing education to children around the world.
Adam Braun
Founder Pencils of Promise

With the Classy platform, now any social impact organization can easily activate and empower their community at a fraction of the cost and time.
Scott Harrison
CEO charity: water